


but never doubt

by Damkianna



Category: Conan the Barbarian (1980s Movies)
Genre: Betrayal, F/F, Kissing, Loyalty, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining, Post-Canon, Trust, Undercover Missions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:48:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25999273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Damkianna/pseuds/Damkianna
Summary: Jehnna was brought before Zula with her hands forced behind her. One man had her by the elbow, the other by the shoulder—the better to push her down onto her knees on the stone floor.Zula smiled."Good," she said. "Well done."
Relationships: Jehnna/Zula (Conan the Barbarian)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15
Collections: Fandom Giftbox 2020





	but never doubt

**Author's Note:**

  * For [galerian_ash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/galerian_ash/gifts).



> ♥
> 
> Title borrowed from Shakespeare:
> 
>  _Doubt thou the stars are fire,_   
> _doubt that the sun doth move,_   
> _doubt truth to be a liar—_   
> _but never doubt I love._

Jehnna was brought before Zula with her hands forced behind her. One man had her by the elbow, the other by the shoulder—the better to push her down onto her knees on the stone floor.

Zula smiled.

"Good," she said. "Well done."

Jehnna lifted her chin, eyes flashing. "What is the meaning of this?" she snapped.

Zula laughed low in her throat, and reached out: slid her fingers into Jehnna's smooth pale hair, and then twisted them, gripping tight, until Jehnna winced. "Helpless little queen," she murmured, forcing Jehnna's head back until it was tilted up toward her. "You didn't know, did you? There was no thought in your head that you might be betrayed." She looked down at Jehnna and sneered. "But then that is no surprise. There are no thoughts in that pretty head at all, hm?"

The men laughed—all of them, not only the two who'd dragged Jehnna in. Their eyes were on Zula. They were enjoying this. All their scheming, all their plotting, and still, most of them would not have dared lay hands on the queen like this. But they were pleased, pleased and already made bolder, by seeing that Zula would.

Zula wet her lips, and wound her fingers tighter still in Jehnna's hair.

She must keep hold. She must not give Jehnna up to them, not when they were beginning to feel bold. She must keep them amused, distracted. Not for long, now. Surely it could not be long.

She'd had word sent, the prearranged signal made, this morning. Jehnna's guard—those among Jehnna's guard who deserved to be called as much—would be coming, any moment.

But until they arrived, she would do what she must.

Jehnna was looking up at her, eyes wide, breath quick. Zula reached out with her free hand and put her thumb to one side of Jehnna's throat, her fingers to the other, a collar.

One of the men would have given her a knife, if she had asked. But she could not put a knife to Jehnna's skin.

She remembered the hierophant. Jehnna kneeling, helpless. The gleaming blade, drawing closer.

She would do what she must. But not that.

"What does it feel like?" she murmured, and gripped with her hand just a little, dug in at the sides of Jehnna's throat without squeezing at all where it counted. Could Jehnna tell? Zula didn't know. She couldn't guess. She leaned down, lip curling, and tugged Jehnna's head back harder. "What does it feel like, to be leashed like a beast? All this time following you at heel like a hunter's hound—" She turned her head, and spat on the floor. "I should have killed you a long time ago."

Jehnna drew a sharp breath. Zula waited, heart pounding. It would be anger first, surely. Anger, outrage, scorn. Zula hoped so; these, Zula could bear. Disbelief—

Disbelief would be worse by far. Disbelief, entreaty. Pain.

Please let it be anger. Zula could hold in the face of anger, and both of them would live. And later, when it was over, Zula would explain everything, and if the gods were with her, Jehnna would forgive her.

They were already clearly inclined to be kind: it was anger after all. Jehnna's mouth twisted, and her face turned hard. As hard as it could get, Zula thought, when it was made for sweetness instead.

"You are lower than a hound," Jehnna bit out. "Hounds are trained, hounds are loyal. You are a _snake_. After all I've done for you, all I've given you—you were saved from a slow death and made the captain of my guard, and now, for my generosity—"

"Generosity," Zula said, and laughed. "Is that what you call it? Binding me in service to a _girl_ , a girl who would call herself a queen, so that I must bow and scrape to such a slip of a thing." She made a face, filled her mouth and her eyes with disdain. "Taramis, now—there was a queen! A woman of power, a woman who would have brought forth a god among us. A woman who knew what needed to be done to make this kingdom great. You, you sit on that throne and you simper, you know nothing; you give our enemies gifts, when you should demand tribute! Pathetic."

The men were laughing, murmuring to each other. They, too, spoke Taramis's name, looked at Jehnna with derision and told each other what a queen they had once had, how clever and strong she had been, how all the palace had trembled with the force of her anger; how Dagoth had come at her call.

How easy it was to forget what would have come next, if not for Conan—to forget, to ignore. That was what came of preventing a doom that would have covered all the earth in darkness, Zula thought wryly. Because you had prevented it, it was not real, not next to the petty grumbling of men who grudged a queen who chose peace instead of war.

"How _dare_ you," Jehnna spat, and Zula snarled at her and pressed in warningly, a little harder, around the column of that soft throat.

And then one of the men stepped forward with a smile, and reached out to touch Jehnna's cheek with the backs of two fingers. "Oh, we will dare a great deal," he said, and looked at Zula. "Come on, already—let us have her. When we're done with her we can tie her body behind a horse. Drag her through the streets of Shadizar for all to see. Eh?"

Zula sneered at him, snapped her teeth and watched him flinch. Two full seasons, now, and still, so many of these men of Shadizar did not know what to make of her. Her own lieutenants knew her ways, and heeded her orders, and others followed by example; but the ones she knew only a little, who knew her only a little, still thought she was a wild dog, a beast untamed.

" _I_ will kill her," she said to him. "I will do it, and no one else. She will answer to me for what she has done to me, for the insults she has heaped on me. You'll have her when I am done, and not before."

"Insults?" Jehnna said, sharp. "You think I've dealt you insults? As if it weren't an insult to _me_ , to have some mad barbarian for a royal guard—"

Zula let go of her hair, and struck her face. An open palm: it made a loud sound, and stung enough to turn Jehnna's cheek pink beneath it, but no more than that.

Jehnna was only angry. She couldn't be blamed for the words that came to her tongue at a time like this, when she thought Zula had betrayed her utterly.

But Zula's throat was tight anyway.

"Enough. You _are_ a fool, to say such things to me." There, in the distance. That sound must be footsteps crossing stone. It could not be long now. "You are at my mercy. No one here will help you." Zula paused, and leaned closer. "You should not be so reckless, speaking in this way to a 'mad barbarian'."

Jehnna's face had twisted to one side with the slap. She caught her breath and looked up again, eyes bright, and there was something in that look that Zula did not understand.

And then there was a shout, faint and wordless; and the man closest to the arching entryway of the room cried, "We are found! Quick—"

A knife in his throat cut his words short.

The men who had betrayed Jehnna had been itching for a fight. Their wishes were granted. Guards poured in from the corridor. Blades clashed. Zula let go of Jehnna's throat and caught her by the shoulders, pulled her to her feet—someone shouted, and she had an instant's warning to turn and duck her head so that the sword that struck her came down on the leather that crossed her shoulder instead of anything more precious.

The leather split beneath the blow, and the sword bit into the slope of her shoulder. But not deep enough to stop her from swinging her arm back, so that she caught the man behind her in the ribs. He cried out, surprised, and his strength was no longer behind his blade; she gripped it and twisted it out of his hands, and only cut two of her fingers doing it. She didn't bother to turn it around. She hit him with the hilt, in the gut and then in the head, and he fell down groaning and didn't get up again.

By the time she was done, the man who had stepped forward to touch Jehnna's cheek had an arm around Jehnna's throat.

"I'll see you dead," he was saying furiously. "I'll see you dead if it's the last thing I do—"

"It will be," Zula said, and he looked at her and not at Jehnna.

Zula meant it. But Jehnna was already moving in his grip—she had only one way to hurt him right now, without a knife or a staff or even shoes to kick him, and she used it.

She bit him, his bare forearm just below the wrist. He howled and jerked reflexively to shake off the thing that was biting him, and Jehnna wrenched herself free, and then there was nothing left to stop Zula from kicking him in the chest. He stumbled back into a wall, feet slow, probably dizzy with pain, and his head cracked into the stone; he slid to the floor.

It would be good if he lived. Then he could be questioned. But Zula couldn't bring herself to hope for it.

Around them, it was almost all over. There were still a few men fighting, but more of them were down, dead or bleeding, and there were too many guards. They would not escape.

Jehnna wiped at her mouth, making a face, and then spat. There was a little blood, Zula saw, with something that should not have been pride.

"I should have insisted he dip himself in honey, first," Jehnna said.

Zula should, perhaps, have laughed.

She didn't. She looked at Jehnna, and swallowed, and then dropped to her knees.

It felt awkward. It was not something she did—not something Jehnna had ever made her do. But it seemed only fair to.

"Zula," Jehnna said, starting to frown.

"To touch the queen of Shadizar without her order," Zula said quietly, "is to invite any punishment she chooses."

Merely one of the many rules she had had to learn, to understand what would be expected of Jehnna's guard. But right now it felt like the only one that mattered.

Jehnna stood before her and looked at her, chin high, hands clasped. She took a step forward, and touched Zula's hair, the tight coiled mass of it; and then her hand trailed down to Zula's throat; and then she reached out with the other and touched Zula's cheek.

The three places: where Zula had pulled, and where Zula had closed her hand, and where Zula had struck.

But Jehnna did not do any of those things. She was—

She wasn't angry anymore, Zula saw, looking up into her face, distantly bewildered. She wasn't angry at all. How? How could she not be angry? It had been only moments. She should have been surprised to have Zula surrender to her. She shouldn't have been frowning. She shouldn't have been quiet. Even if she understood, now, what Zula had been doing—even then, she should have been angry, demanding to know what Zula had been thinking, or why she had not been told of it.

"It is your highest duty to protect me," Jehnna said. "And that's what you were doing. That is the same as an order—better."

Zula stared at her. "You knew."

Jehnna blinked, brow furrowing again. "Of course I knew."

"You knew, and you let me—"

"Of course I did," Jehnna said, as if it were that simple. "Come on. Come on, get up." She cleared her throat, and shook her hair back over her shoulders. "It seems you have a great deal to tell me."

It was not so much as all that.

Zula escorted Jehnna to the queen's chambers; she would have her chance to question the men who'd plotted against her, to look into their faces and sentence them as she pleased, but not until the royal interrogators—and Zula, for that matter—had had their turn.

There, Jehnna sat back on her silk-draped bed, drew up her knees and clasped her arms around them, and spoke. She had, it seemed, guessed a good deal of it already, from what had been said and done in front of her. She was still foolish, sometimes; but not that foolish. That there were men among Taramis's guard who hadn't been there on the day of Dagoth's rise, or had been but chose to forget it—that some of them hadn't been pleased to have a queen who'd favored them with gifts and promises and flattering words replaced by a girl who had made none of them captain, but had given that place to a stranger from other lands.

"But they still let you join their scheme," Jehnna observed.

"The thing they did not like about me," Zula said, "was also the thing that made them think I would do it. What do outland tribes know of loyalty? Surely I liked their helpless little queen no better than they."

Jehnna looked at her, and then away. "You must have done well, making them believe it."

"To them, it was only the truth," Zula said slowly. "It pleased them to have that truth acknowledged, even by me."

There was something in Jehnna's face, her voice—Zula would have thought it might be suspicion, accusation, distrust, except that she no longer believed it could be. But knowing what it wasn't made it no easier to guess what it _was_.

"I told you nothing. How did you know?"

And that, at last, made Jehnna look at her again. Wide-eyed, for a moment; and then she bit her lip.

"You wouldn't," she said at last, soft. "Not like that. You agreed to be captain of my guard, you—" She stopped, swallowing, and then lifted her chin, as if to remind herself that queens did not hesitate. "You said you'd stay. If you hadn't wanted to, then you wouldn't have. If you stopped wanting to, you'd say so, and you'd go." She stopped again, and smiled just a little, and shrugged her shoulders, careless with grace. "If you wanted to kill me, you'd tell me as much, and pick up your staff, and challenge me to prove I was good enough to stop you. You wouldn't whisper in the dark."

Which was true enough, Zula thought—but a great deal on which to bet a queen's life.

"Besides," Jehnna added, lighter, impish, "you had such fine speeches to make about how unfit I was to be served! You don't talk nearly so much if you can help it."

Zula gave her a flat look.

And there it was again: something in Jehnna's face, a shadow behind her teasing smile, that did not belong there.

"What else?" Zula said.

Jehnna looked at her.

"There's something you aren't saying. Say it."

Jehnna went still. The smile dropped away. Her eyes seemed very large, and her face was blank, unmoving. The silence stretched.

And then she said, "I know it was—I know you were not wrong. I am not the queen my aunt was. I don't know how to be one. You, and Akiro, and even Malak, you are all strong and clever and skilled, each in your own ways. You owe me nothing; you give me gifts. You serve me because you choose to, not because I am worthy of it. Not because I have earned it." She drew her knees in closer to herself, absent, and swallowed. "I want to. I want to, I will try to, if you'll only be patient with me for a while—"

Zula could not listen to any more. It was too strange to hear it, Jehnna halting and uncertain where she ought to be bold. Bold, and difficult, and too stubborn to admit it: that was how she should be when she didn't know what she was doing.

"Enough," Zula said, and reached out and touched Jehnna's mouth; only to stop her, that was all, except then there she was, standing before Jehnna with her fingertips to Jehnna's lips. Jehnna's eyes leapt to her, and Jehnna drew a sharp breath that parted her mouth under Zula's touch, and oh, that was too much, too much and not enough at once.

Jehnna's cheek was still pink, a little, where Zula had struck it. She made her hand move, touched that place instead, and it should have been safer but it wasn't. It only made her think of doing it—of Jehnna, letting her, allowing it, knowing why. Trusting her reasons. Trusting _her_.

And, thinking that, she could not help but let her fingers slip to Jehnna's throat next.

"Your aunt," Zula said aloud. "Her hierophant. Her god. The men who followed her. There are so many people you trusted—none of them earned it. None of them were worthy of it. But still—" She stopped. She didn't know why. Her throat was tight again. "But still, you let me—"

Jehnna was staring up at Zula. Her breath was quick, her eyes flicking back and forth over Zula's face. And then a sudden determination settled on her brow, and she rose up off the edge of the bed and leaned up, and kissed Zula's mouth.

This was not halting, or uncertain. This was a declaration, deliberate. But a declaration without expectation: she didn't linger, didn't press. She kissed Zula firmly, boldly, and withdrew the same way. "Of course I did," she said steadily, chin high; and it was only that Zula knew her ways, saw the pinching in her mouth and the wideness of her eyes, the fine shiver in her hands, that made it clear she was afraid.

Afraid of this, _this_ , where she had not managed to be afraid of thirty men who wanted her dead and Zula's hand around her throat.

"You chose to," Zula murmured, and took her by the shoulders, and didn't let go. "And I will try to earn it, if you will only be patient."

Jehnna swallowed hard. "Zula," she said.

Zula ran a thumb along her cheek, her chin—tipped her face up, and kissed her.

This, too, she thought hazily, she hadn't earned; but Jehnna let her, let her and pressed into her hands and kissed her back, and she was hardly fool enough to refuse such a gift.


End file.
